ELEVEN! Festival (Wavelength 515 – night 1) (feat. The Jim Storie Juniors / The Guest Bedroom / Bruised Knees / Anagram)
The Boat. Wednesday, February 16, 2011.
For anyone that truly loves local music, Wavelength's annual festival has become one of the most exciting events of the year. This year's event (titled ELEVEN!, numbered 515), didn't have the grab-ya cachet of last year's rather excellent Wavelength 500 blowout, which was something of a grand summary of ten years of the series' weekly shows, with plenty of reunions and spectacle. This year's was more of a snapshot of what's going on now — there were some old hands around, but just as many bands making their WL débuts. Less flashy, but a superb overview of some of the best music at hand right now.
And once again, the festival moved through five different venues in five nights, each show featuring a variety of bands but also a well-curated unity. Kicking things off with an excursion to The Boat in Kensington Market1 gave Night 1 a dive-y, frills-free-but-gloriously-ragged vibe, rather well-suited to the bands at hand. Like virtually all Wavelength shows, this featured lighting from General Chaos, multicoloured swirling projections behind the bands that always change to reflect each act's personality. And this festival also introduced the efficient stage-managing of Adham Ghanem — now a Wavelength fixture — who did an excellent job of keeping five busy nights running on schedule.
Another WL fixture wasn't in place as the first band was introduced by Jonny Dovercourt. But that would be because Duncan "Doc Pickles" MacDonell, the series' longstanding MC, was getting ready to perform as the lead vocalist for The Jim Storie Juniors. Anyone that's witnessed MacDonell's unique verbal dexterity — blindfolded tightrope walking over the abyss of randomness and nonlinearity, sometimes pausing to dip a toe into the roiling chaos below — might think they know what to expect from him in his musical pursuits. That turns out to be halfway right — but along with an occasional propensity to sing off the mic and occasional digressions from digressions there's also a reined-in musical craft on display.
Even after having checked out some of his "Audiozines"2, I was still surprised to see MacDonnell — in a strangely nostalgia-inducing Chip + Pepper shirt — actually singing (and not, say, sing-speaking). In fact, he was totally into it, eyes closed, double-fisting the microphone — no surprise given his attitude that everyone should be fully and unironically into whatever it is you're gonna be into. All the times he's ended WL shows telling the audience that now it's their turn to go and start a band weren't just rhetorical flourishes.
A lot of the songs from this set came from recent JSJ album What's It Going To Take To Get This Fight Started?, but it was illuminating to hear them in more fleshed-out rockin' versions, backed by Matt Robinson and Chad Storie (of 122 Greige), along with the titular Jim Storie on drums. There was good stuff like "Don't Take My Shortwave Away" and the sticks-in-your-head "Girl on the Green", and a few subtle political messages ("Who's gonna pay for Afghanistan? Poppies only cover half of the bill," asks "Goods and Services") amongst the narratives of economic disaffection. The setlist didn't touch on any of the album's witty blues deconstructions, but MacDonnell did manage to tie the songs to the larger event by dedicating each song to a different year of Wavelength's run.
Listen to a track from this set here.
Though still a relatively new band making their Wavelength début, this wouldn't be the first brush with the series for some of the Bruised Knees's members. They were hitting the series at the right time, though, with their material still sounding fresh even as they're definitely settling into it on stage. Natalie Logan (vox/keyb/perc) looked more relaxed, interacting with the crowd more than previously, giving the indication that she could become the de facto mediator with the audience. Fellow vocalist/guitarist Chuck Skullz (ex-Creeping Nobodies) looks more focused on the work at hand, like an alchemist in the final stages of some intricate transmutation, creating tasty Sonic Youth-y textures on songs like "Inside Eye".
That contrasted with the pounding rhythms of "F LK T PE", Logan complementing Dennis Amos' drums with her own drumpad work. There are some good hooks here, but rhythmic interplay is the band's strongest calling card, and songs like "Holy See's Horror" are getting more textured with time. There were some bracingly good blasts here, as invigorating as the February winds outside.
Listen to a track from this set here.
The Guest Bedroom were a band I'd been meaning to see again for awhile. In fact, it had been nearly a year-and-a-half since I'd seen the veteran crew, during which time they'd released the full-length A Year’s Supply Of Rabbit's Feet. While I'd previously been only been semi-won over by the band, everything here felt a little more in focus for me, with Rob Castle's keyb work acting as an effective foil to Sandi Falconer's guit and vox, winding their way though tough-but-shifty sounding songs. I was definitely taken with "Ugly Thoughts", which lasted as long as the preceding two songs combined and earned the length. The keyb line was grinding up against Allan Toth's bass while Falconer's guit moved nimbly between them — all while the song geared up to a gallop for the shouted refrain, "this is a warning that you're underperforming / and you should show up a little more prepared / This is a warning that you're underperforming / you're not standing up to our evaluation!"
I appreciate how there's a slightly herky-jerk sensibility to the rhythms that isn't quite given free reign in the face of the band's punk spirit, leaving the whole thing just unsettled enough. The songs from the album were punctuated with a couple new ones, including an agreeable one that might someday end up being called "Sympathetic Magic". As the band closed with "Tough Luck", I felt that the set ended with me liking them more than I did at the start — and now I'm rather more eager to catch 'em again.
Listen to a track from this set here.
Closing out the first night was Anagram, a band with which I'd become quite familiar over the preceding year. The band's usual singleminded thrum was on display right at the outset with "Done Yet" and a fiery "Evil", both from the superb Majewski. Vocalist Matt Mason sings as if he's consistently too-aware that there's a meanness in this world, and the musical attack behind him hits like a fierce blow intent on inculcating that rough lesson.
As sometimes happens when the band plays, for the first couple songs people were just sort of standing around. But the music has a sort of hypnotizing effect on audiences, as if awakening a vague sense of dread that makes people want to escape the room or escape their bodies in some sort of unknowing lowlevel panic. Soon enough, there was a typical Anagram "pit" — not so much people slamming into each other as bumping with a sort of brownian motion, stirred up by something outside their control. This wasn't entirely the usual Anagram crowd, so it was even less aggressive than usual — Doc Pickles would later refer to it, with fond satisfaction, as the "gentlest moshing ever".
"I've Been Wrong Before" found the band getting so wound up that guitarist Willy Mason and bassist Jeff Peers were starting to get a little out of sync, though that mostly just added to the dissociative effect. That raggedyness carried forward into their cover of Leonard Cohen's "The Butcher", which lurched around like an angry, confused junkie searching for redemption. After that, though, the band snapped back into focus, and closed out the set with awesome precision. Toward the end of the set, a couple songs got stretched out as Matt Mason wandered into the crowd. Even with his mic cord being guided behind him, sometimes he simply seemed content to not sing and just let people bounce off him, the resulting lockgroove chugging was highly excellent stuff.
At forty-five minutes, this was the longest set of the night. An excellent start to the festival, even if it meant for a late Wednesday night.
Listen to a track from this set here.
1 Originally scheduled to be held across the street at Terenga, the show had to be relocated with that venue's closing.
2 A rigourous music give-away-er, you can find a whole bunch of his material, in several styles, available for free download on the internet archive.
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